Here is the exchange that has Candy Crowley doing the heavy lifting for the Romney campaign.

CROWLEY: But couldn’t that huge gap, which is a pretty big gap between those who think you could handle the economy as opposed to Mitt Romney — couldn’t it also be that, from the day — from the month the president took office, we still have 1.7 million fewer jobs in the marketplace?

AXLEROD: Candy, let’s have — you know what, I’m happy to have that discussion. Do you know that, when he was campaigning for president in 2007 and 2008, Governor Romney had nothing but praise for the economic policies that were in place at that time, as America was sliding into the worst recession since the Great Depression, after eight years in which we…

CROWLEY: But this isn’t Romney. This is a fact.

Steve Benen goes on to point out that in the first 6 months of the Obama presidency, the country lost 3.89 million jobs. And yes, President Obama was president at the time of those job losses, but if anyone thinks that a single thing that President Obama did in that first 6 months had ANYTHING to do with the job losses, they are seriously deluded.

Here is a chart that shows the number of job losses/gains over the last 10 years or so.

Courtesy of Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly

You can clearly see that the recession began under the Bush administration in 2008 and continued into the first year of President Obama’s “first” term. Notice the downturn in 2001 under President Bush, that wasn’t Bush’s fault either. If anyone is responsible for that downturn, it would be President Clinton.

In the many economics classes I suffered through in college, there was one thing that was pounded into our heads over and over again. It was the idea that the economy flows in cycles. What goes up will surely come down. They also taught us that policies enacted by any administration only have a marginal effect on the overall economy. I would argue that the stimulus package that was passed in 2009 had a greater impact than most, simply because of its size. But to be honest, what President Obama did was to stabilize our economy, which then allowed for it to begin to grow again.

Another concept we learned in these economics classes was that it takes time for changes in policies to have an impact. There is a lag time between when actions by the Fed or laws passed by congress have an impact. The analogy that it takes time to turn a giant ship around applies very nicely to our economy.

So regardless of what administration is in office, I try not to play the blame game when it comes to the economy. But I do play the “push back” game on those who do like to play the blame game – especially in instances like the one above. Candy Crowley clearly doesn’t understand how our economy works, or she is choosing to play dumb in order to further the new TeaNN network she works for.

When you include the fact that the first budget President Obama signed was one that was negotiated by the previous congress and President Bush, it becomes even more tenuous to try to pin those job losses on President Obama. President Obama reluctantly signed that budget into law, not wanting to create any more uncertainty than already existed. Remember how people were freaking out about the “Second Great Depression?” I do.

A majority of Americans believe that former President George W. Bush is more responsible than President Obama for the current economic problems in the country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Bush was more to blame while 29 percent put the blame on Obama; 9 percent said both men deserved blame while 6 percent said neither did. Among registered voters, the numbers are almost identical; 54 percent blame Bush, while 30 percent blame Obama.

Independents, widely considered the most critical voting bloc this fall, continue to blame Bush far more than Obama for the economic troubles. Fifty-seven percent of unaffiliated voters put the blame on the former Republican president, while 25 percent believe the blame rests more with Obama.

Heck, even one in five Republicans say Bush is more responsible than Obama for the state of the economy! (emphasis mine)

The same poll shows that the American people hold the Republicans responsible for the gridlock in Washington with 60% saying that President Obama is trying to work with Republicans to “accomplish” something while only 27% say the same about Republicans.

At some point, you would think that Candy Crowley would actually pay attention to some of the polls that run counter to the memes she is trying to push and realize that she looks pretty stupid to most people when she trumpets Republican party talking points that exist only in the wet dreams of the Tea Partiers.

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Candy camped out in Texas in 2000 shadowing George W. Bush and gushed over him like Miss Piggy swoons over Kermit the Frog. And her softball questions then may have paid off possibly as Candy got a coveted CNN interview in 2010 with the former President together with his brother, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. It was too much to hope that Crowley would conduct anything remotely resembling a real interview, instead treating George W. with the usual undeserved deference like much of the rest of the media, No substantiv­e questions were asked about how he royally screwed up our country, our national pride and our moral stature throughout the world. Of course Bush/Cheney were good to keep far away from microphones, any media not feeding into their BS.

In 2004, Crowley supported Bush’s “war on terror” making us believe that it was far more a concern for our nation than the economy and jobs.

Newt Gingrich slimes the media but it is has been the Republicans best friend this past year and not only at Faux News. For countless hours a week we are subjected to only Obama-bashing on ALL networks. Even MSNBC loops video clips around the clock of Republican candidates, Republican strategist/politicians spouting their talking points like…”the food stamp president”…the “socialist” president. It is NOT FAIR and NOT EQUAL to have so many unanswered hours promoted for one party only. Rarely do we ever see our President anymore getting a word out. Even when the President spoke this past week in Orlando about easing visa red tape to encourage foreign tourism to places like Florida, his speech was only carried on CNN and MSNBC. Per usual, Fox didn’t cover it, so our president’s words only got out to maybe a few million viewers a half hour per week when many times that number will only hear the slamming of our President, 24/7 by Republicans. I know there is no Democratic primary interest but what media saturation the Republicans are getting. NBC will be conducting the 21st Republican “debate” Monday in Florida. The “debates” have been so ugly, so crazy that they have been attracting high numbers of viewers who equate it with “reality TV”. But along with the entertainment, everyone hears nothing but LIES and hate spewed at our President. The networks love the election season as they will get much of the billion plus dollars in campaign coffers that will be spent this year. The networks Newt hates are all over each other to see who can show the most clips of Republicans spouting their anti-Obama propaganda.

An article in my Sunday paper cited the many millions of American jobs moved overseas in the past decade. For exmple, Apple has 700,000 workers making their iPhones, pads, etc, mostly in China while employing only 43,000 in the USA, mostly in sales, marketing, engineering. But even Apple engineering jobs are being outsourced from the Silicon Valley to overseas.

Newt Gingrich was first up on David Gregory’s Meet the Press today lambasting again the MEDIA saying the media isn’t doing its job to expose our “Saul Alinsky” radical president and the radicals he has around him. Of course Gingrich knows the ignorance of the average American who know NOTHING about Saul Alinsky only knowing that he has a Jewish and Russian sounding name. Most Americans won’t take the time to read what Alinsky, the father of modern community organizing ACTUALLY SAID. He feared an American fascism eveb then. Here is a snippet from his last interview with Playboy in 1972 just months before he died (BTW, Obama was 3 years old):

“There’s a second revolution seething beneath the surface of middle-class America — the revolution of a bewildered, frightened and as-yet-inarticulate group of desperate people groping for alternatives — for hope. Their fears and their frustrations over their impotence can turn into political paranoia and demonize them, driving them to the right, making them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday. The right would give them scapegoats for their misery — blacks, hippies, Communists — and if it wins, this country will become the first totalitarian state with a national anthem celebrating “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” But we’re not going to abandon the field to them without a long, hard fight — a fight I think we’re going to win. Because we’ll show the middle class their real enemies: the corporate power elite that runs and ruins the country — “

A clear decade earlier I was in an argument with a German student doing his junior year at my Hoosier college. We American students were drilling him about neo-Nazis getting back into power and the German student upset us when he said, “the next great World fascist power will not be Germany, but the USA!”

Note the greatest disparity favoring Republicans over Democrats is found at CNN, followed by the two NBC channels. The most “balanced” are found at Faux. Rarely ever watch Faux so not sure if the Democrats are “blue dog” nor know how much they were pilloried by the Faux talking heads. Announced in our Houston paper, Faux is planning on starting up a Hispanic cable network this year, MundoFox, in at least those markets with higher Hispanic demographics.

Who The Hell Am I!

I’m a liberal that is extreme in some ways and not in others. I support President Obama and make no apologies for it. I think he has done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider that he inherited a huge mess and has faced unprecedented opposition from a lazy & desperate Republican Party. I’m a film producer/director/editor, adjunct professor, technician, media critic and photographer when I’m not reading left wing blogs and typing on this one. – On Twitter @ExtremeLiberal or Email at liberalforreal (at) gmail.com

Own An Important Part Of American History!

Cicely Tyson narrates this award winning documentary that tells the story of African American migration from the old south to the prosperous north. Winner of 5 Awards including "Best Film" at the Astoria International Film Festival, the "Paul Robeson Award" at the Newark Black Film Festival and "Best Film Relating To The Black Experience" at the XXV International Black Cinema Berlin/Germany!